PWB October: BOO

Play
007 First Light is just what I wanted. Great to look at, well acted, well written, and just a really enjoyable romp. I'm not sure how much replayability it'll have, but for now it's a lot of fun.

Diablo 4. I've bounced off this about 3 times, but I got the itch last week and, for some reason, I've stuck with it this time. The worldbuilding is second-to-none (Blizzard innit), and it's always satisfying crunching hundreds of enemies to death in one glorious AOE fireball. I just wish it let me play how I want to; slowly. It really betrays its live-service roots. It's desperate to get you to max level and CONSUMING CONTENT, rather than taking it slow and exploring this stunning(ly ugly) world they've created. I don't care about the latest 'season', I want to wander around the starting zone. I've already dodged two free max-level upgrades the game tried to present me with.

DQ 7 Reimagined. I played the demo (the first 3 hours) of this months ago, and had almost forgotten the plot, so figured it was time to pick up the full game. It's a very cosy game. The way the story is structured, with each zone being standalone little tales, makes it feel like playing a Sunday-morning cartoon. And for a top-down game, the graphics are frequently stunning, especially the character models in the cutscenes.

Want
WoW Forever. GTA 6. Ocarina of Time. November is going to be an all-time month.

Play

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave - which is brilliant but also comically large. I've put hours and hours into it and I still haven't completed part one of the game with even one of the game's four main characters. It's a really great game though with lots and lots to do and I can see myself chipping away at this for months.

Final Fantasy XIV - also so large it's just an ongoing background project really. One of the few MMOs that doesn't care at all about getting you to endgame so you can just potter through most of it at your own speed. It incentivises players to revisit older content so there's always someone around to run dungeons with, or you can do pretty much all of it solo these days. A really fantastic game (and I'm a couple of hundred hours into the "free trial", so a very cheap and accessible title to get into, too).

Want

I'd like to play the Witcher 3 remaster but it seems to have come in a bit hot so I'm going to give it a couple of weeks and some patches to sort itself out.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer is out in a few days, I'm waiting for reviews but if it's good then a bit of arcadey pod racing could be a good way to spend some time. I still want to get Zero Company too but Fire Emblem is meeting all my turn-based strategy needs for now.

Bin

I still don't give a monkeys about GTA 6 and I'll probably just hide away playing Zelda or something while everyone else goes on about it.

Play
The amount of GOTY tier games released in succession in the last few weeks is frankly ridiculous, I didn't have to buy them all Day 1 but I couldn't help it, FOMO baby!

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave - I still have issues with this, mainly the gap between actual map fights, but on the whole this is probably the best Switch 2 only game I've played…but it's also a huge game like Gar said, so rather than try to gorge myself on it non stop I've been pacing myself and I think it's making me appreciate it much more than I would.

Trails in the Sky: 2nd Chapter - I was going to try playing this and Fire Emblem somewhat alternately but I've only beat the prologue on this so far, I usually play a Trails game non stop until I beat it but with Fire Emblem out on the same day I knew that as much as I love Trails I'd be thinking of Fire Emblem non stop if I put that back so I'm trying to wait until I can give this the time it deserves by giving Fire Emblem the time it deserves.

I was so sure this would be my easy GOTY but Fire Emblem really is quite good, if they remade Trails SC (my fave game in the series) as well as they did Trails FC (Trails 1st is in my opinion, the best example of a remake of any game I've played I think?) then it still might be, but we'll see. @_@

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve - Fucking hell this just came out globally today and it's yet another banger, I am not entirely surprised as AC7 was excellent and this is a series that nailed the formula first try way back on PS1 so I'm glad to see this review so well. I wouldn't have started this today but I think a mission based jet simulator is a nice palette cleanser for 2 massive RPGs, and I just wanted to blow up planes.

…

A bit too many FPV cutscenes of a typically confusing AC story but it's really good, it looks freaking gorgeous, flying atop the clouds greets you with a Realm of Heaven, a landscape of rolling cotton, then you fly through them and the water droplets condense on the screen uuuuuwwaaaaa

As I said, the formula hasn't really changed, you fly and shoot missiles at far away blinking red targets until there's a big orange ball at the end of the wispy line of smoke. AC7's strength was actually in it's mission variety though, so I don't expect this to be any different.

insert a whole load of horror games here, Resi, Alan Wake hopefully, Fatal Frame…etc

Want
I only needed to play up to the first boss of the new Castlevania: Belmont's Curse to now I'm getting it, this is why I didn't buy the Prince of Persia metroidvania as well, I knew I was going to possibly get this.

Play
Outrun 2006, Space Invaders Extreme, Zelda Four Swords GC Mario Kart Wii but mostly I am finally playing Paper Mario Thousand Year Door.

I am loving the Retroid Pocket Nova.

Want
A bit of time to set up playing Steam games on my Nova so that I can play Trails in the Sky SC.

Started playing Fatal Frame 2/Project Zero 2* a few days ago and last night and it honest to god feels like one of the best horror games I've ever played.

The atmosphere and visuals are all on point but the combat really seals the deal for me, using a camera to exorcise a ghost is already more original than shooting or bludgeoning it to death but having to build power by keeping it in shot as it comes closer before snapping the shutter is a great mechanic. You can upgrade the Camera to mitigate the risk but it still feels cool.

Also, it's not exactly Silent Hill 2 levels of pure mental assault but the atmosphere is great, really cold and immersive, I'm playing an undub just because I wanted that 'Ringu' vibe a bit more as well. I'll never be truly scared by a horror game again but some of the sound effect jump scares have made me jump a bit

God I hope the Remake of this that came out a few months ago is good

*Fatal Frame is not only a much better name and named after an important game mechanic, its the one that the series clearly used going forward so I'm calling it that

Play
I have been dabbling in Witcher 3: Remastered - I think it's safe to say the Switch 2 port, while a vast improvement and a technical marvel at 10 watts, isn't the way any sane person should be playing it if they have a choice. I don't think the changes are really all that pronounced. As others have said, I think it looks brighter, but perhaps not better. The controls and responsiveness are better, but it's still got that slight mid 2010s jank to it. And everyone's face still looks a bit basic (showing that while graphical progress has stalled, it hasn't stopped entirely). But when the sun it setting and the wind is whipping through trees, Witcher 3 really does a good sense of place very, very well. I still think I'll grind on with Cyberpunk though - if I'm going to finish one of these two CPDR monsters it'll be Cyberpunk.

Starfield I'd finally got around to rebuilding my main PC, lifting into the AM5 era, and I'd been going back through games just checking everything was fine (and pushing up the shinies). And I ended up playing a fair bit of Starfield. Which, I just don't think is as shit as everyone says. It is sort of shit, and absolutely a terrible engine trying its best to so space stuff, but it really is quite respectful of your time. You can wander, but also if you want to go somewhere, you can just click on it. A lot of people hate it, as it seems to make the universe feel small, but if you can control yourself, I've found it quite refreshing. Also, the planets are all quite barren and boring with little settlements that aren't that exciting either - but the bleakness is also quite interesting. I find No Man's Sky is now so desperate to please that the HUD is covered in fucking icons. Here, you can trudge across a stone strewed landscape for 5 minutes, find a small shipping container and then find a chocolate bar left on a table after going through 2 airlocks and a loading screen. It's quite refreshingly bland.

Ball X Pitt I have, it has to be said, slowly become obsessed with this on Switch 2. As I've said, I originally on PC got stuck with a bug that meant I couldn't progress. On Switch I got over that hump and I'm now all in. BOING.

Also continuing with Zero Company (which I like, but needs more enemy variety and less American accents), and the usual dabbling with Crossworlds, MK World and bits and bobs.

I also picked up Last of Us 2, to try to finish that on PC (as my PS5 is back in Wales, and I'm in Ireland). Can confirm Last of Us 2 does not run on PC handhelds at anything approaching a decent frame rate. Such a good looking game though, good lord.

Want
I guess Galaxy Racer - I do REALLY like the sound of the more roguelight structure to a racing league. A bit of jeopardy is always welcome.

Bin
Vets. We had to have a stray cat put down (we'd been feeding it for a year, but it was not healthy) and now another cat is ill, and we're already 500 euros down at a vet. Absolute fucking racket. I appreciate it's the hardest job to train for, but vets fees in the UK and Ireland are now an absolute scandal.

This cat is 17 - so there comes a point where you have to make brutal economic decisions. My partner has two other cats that are older. One 24 and the other 29. The oldest living cat on the planet is 30. This 29 year old cat is healthier than I am. So the only potential way of recouping these costs is hanging in for another year or two and trying to get on This Morning.

Oh yeah, two games I forgot to mention, Gears of War: E-Day and Galaxy Racer, hearing really good things about both, Gears feels slightly less of a big event than it used to be but I really enjoyed the original's combat design when I replayed it a few years ago. I might have forgot more games and/or more are coming on the way, just an absolute cascade of really good games in a sort span of time @_@

I'm also quite tempted by Galactic Racer, though the campaign thing makes me less certain; I've never really gotten along with roguelikes.

Do we need another arcade racer with infinite restarts and rewind features though? The jeopardy in Forza is non-existent. I think this is a great idea that should be taken into a lot of racing games going forwards - some sort of mode that makes decisions matter.

Oh, the instant rewind is certainly a step too far. I'm not dead set against Galactic Racer's implementation; just wary of it.

I'm always surprised that racing games don't have a 'one rewind' option. So you can't rely on it, but you also get one chance to undo a split-second error that would otherwise waste ten minutes of your time.

It turns out that running Steam games in my Nova is about as difficult as opening a new app and logging into my Steam account.

I now have Trails in the Sky SC (old version) ready to go!

I'm always surprised that racing games don't have a 'one rewind' option. So you can't rely on it, but you also get one chance to undo a split-second error that would otherwise waste ten minutes of your time.

I could see twinning it with your boost bar or something might be fair (rewind a mistake but lose all your turbo). Forza races are dull as fuck. I once caught myself rewinding because I though I hadn't taken an optimal route through a corner.

It turns out that running Steam games in my Nova is about as difficult as opening a new app and logging into my Steam account.

I now have Trails in the Sky SC (old version) ready to go!

You're going to beat it before I start the remake at this point…

It took me about two months to play through the first one.

If you have Prime/Luna you can play it for "free" (for a monthly fee, and supporting genocide I guess - I bought it on cdkeys, which isn't much better) but the second big (good) Star Wars game of the year is here in Galactic Racer, and it's good! The Burnout heritage is obvious, and it's slick, fast, looks great and plays well. I've managed to get it running well at 15 watts on the Ally, which means it'll get couch play (as the fan will stay off) - and I've already been playing the time trial mode over and over as it's quite addictive (though I suck at it). The only confusion is there are effectively 3 types of vehicle, all with different mechanics, and I'm not sure I understand any of them 100%. The boost cadence is quite weird, and there's two sorts. And the cornering clearly relies on a line I haven't found yet.

But it's fast, it's satisfying, and at times looks absolutely astonishing (the 3D walking around bits look better than most games, and it's just the menu system here). So, it's probably a good buy if arcade racers are your thing - though I could see it dropping to 20 quid in a couple of weeks as this gaming season is brutal, and there are about 18 must buy games.

thisispodracing.gif

I've played Galactic Racer a bit as well, probably less than an hour. I have mixed feelings. There's a lot to like, and it does feel a lot like Burnout and Split/Second. It could do with some of Split/Second's track-altering madness, but I think that may have just been a moment in time, as no other game has really done it since. The boosting and drifting mechanics, coupled with a mechanic where if you crash too many times it's game over, do lead to some thrilling moments, as you desperately handbrake-turn your vehicle away from a wall, avoiding a game-over crash, and boost away in an attempt to capitalise on your narrow escape and pick up a few places.

My reservations stem from a feeling that sometimes the game is trying to manipulate me. Why do I struggle for two laps and then overtake everyone on the third? Why, early in races, do other racers speed away from me even while I'm using afterburners, only to be breezed past in the final straight? The first race is very obviously scripted, but I can't shake the feeling that it's not the only one. I suppose it doesn't really matter as everything is loud and impressive, and it might well be my imagination anyway.

Luna is fairly decent as a game-streaming service, although I did crash and lose a race as a direct result of the stream freezing at one point.

I haven't played it but I've been watching streams and fucking hell that look's really good.

I've played Galactic Racer a bit as well, probably less than an hour. I have mixed feelings. There's a lot to like, and it does feel a lot like Burnout and Split/Second. It could do with some of Split/Second's track-altering madness, but I think that may have just been a moment in time, as no other game has really done it since. The boosting and drifting mechanics, coupled with a mechanic where if you crash too many times it's game over, do lead to some thrilling moments, as you desperately handbrake-turn your vehicle away from a wall, avoiding a game-over crash, and boost away in an attempt to capitalise on your narrow escape and pick up a few places.

My reservations stem from a feeling that sometimes the game is trying to manipulate me. Why do I struggle for two laps and then overtake everyone on the third? Why, early in races, do other racers speed away from me even while I'm using afterburners, only to be breezed past in the final straight? The first race is very obviously scripted, but I can't shake the feeling that it's not the only one. I suppose it doesn't really matter as everything is loud and impressive, and it might well be my imagination anyway.

Luna is fairly decent as a game-streaming service, although I did crash and lose a race as a direct result of the stream freezing at one point.

Oh no. I literally won the first race on the line and was backslapping myself for an incredible comeback. But… now you mention it…

I feel like a 6 year old who just "beat" his dad at tennis.

Also as someone who was one of the top 1000 online global players in Split/Second (360 achievements don't lie) I hear you about wanting more of it. Along with Blur (and Burnout 4, yes 4, you heard me) we really peaked in the mid 00s for arcade racers.

I’ve played a bit too and it does seem really good. It really captures that Star Wars thing of everything mechanical feeling like a complete hunk of junk - the extended startup sequence, the sounds, the second and incredibly dangerous boost mechanic which feels like someone literally strapped an extra rocket onto your speeder - which isn’t something that the games usually go for. It’s very fast and I fear my old man reflexes won’t be up to the task but I’m having fun so far.

Some pertinent information concerning my thoughts about Galactic Racer - I had just got back from the dentist after a root canal, so I wasn't in the best mood.

Edit - To examine the first race further, @cavalcade did the moustache-twirling villain crash into the back of you and then blame you in a cutscene after the race? That's what happened to me, and I'm curious how clever and reactive the game is. I like the way other drivers shout stuff at you during the race. At one point I bludgeoned two drivers into walls using my super-afterburner, but I held it down too long and exploded myself. Another driver went past me and shouted "You deserved that!" and I was struck by how apposite the bark was. I really did deserve it.

I think there might be a lot of interesting stuff going on under the surface to make everything more exciting and engaging. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - all the best games do this to some extent. I think the "scripting" I was detecting might be part of this, but I wonder if it is toned-down later in the game, or less obvious if you're not as rubbish at it as I am.

Oh no, yes that's exactly what happened to me.

Over to @Garwoofoo for a third data point….

Yes. That's just the tutorial race, and pretty heavily scripted. (It's well done, though, I didn't really think much of it at the time and it's got three grown men arguing over whether it was pre-planned or not, so it definitely did its job). I think the same thing happens to everyone.

The actual roguelike campaign mode, though, doesn't seem to be like that at all. I've only got up to the end of the qualifiers, but it ends in a head-to-head against an iconic Star Wars character (which makes a change from all the Glup Shittos up to that point) and I was quite cocky about it, thought I'd get another scripted narrow win… sadly I got absolutely humiliated by the guy who roared off into the distance immediately, and I failed my campaign as a result. That'll teach me.

There seems to be a lot of game here though. Loads and loads of unlocks, a big campaign mode, a whole ton of different time trials (there are about ten lots of these, including a dedicated pod racing section), an arcade mode and then a multiplayer section with its own progression and set of dedicated unlocks. Now if I could only stop driving straight into rock walls on Jakku….

The Roguelike campaign is difficult. I won one race of the first set and came third in the final and it said YOU'RE A FAILURE and put me back to the main menu without so much as a by your leave.

Like most roguelikes, it's going to take a lot of runs to unlock the kind of permanent upgrades that make the whole thing manageable. You unlock racing styles, "favours" (bonuses) and permanent upgrades for each of the vehicles that carry over between runs, plus you can add to your pool of unlockable parts for purchase during the runs themselves. The logbook is quite daunting in terms of all the stuff there is to get.

The actual races don't seem to care what position you finish in, though, as long as you don't die. It's the Elimination races that can kick you out on your arse, and they can mostly be avoided on the map if that's not your thing.

Do those upgrades end up in the Arcade/Time Trial mode? I'd have thought not… and that's worrying as the Gold times seem cray cray….

It doesn't look like it (at least not in Time Trial mode - haven't looked at Arcade yet). There's a set configuration for each trial that's shown before you begin.

Wow. Then I have some serious work to do.

I just noticed that the alien running the parts shop is scouse.

That's alarming you only just noticed.

I know. It just didn't register for some reason.

OK, now I'm managing to Gold the time trials. It's the handbrake turns that are critical. But the lack of control customisation on this is driving me nuts. Handbrake on X is a legacy from driving games, for sure, so you roll your finger over the accelerator onto the handbrake to make tight turns. But I've always hated it, and the over reliance on it here to get good times means I'm going to have to custom map it to something else before I break something.

I do think the two different types of brake and two different types of boost is sort of a change for the sake of it, rather than being a genius new addition to driving games. One boost bar, filled when you do stuff, then triggered is fine, with perhaps the explody mechanic if you push it. The interplay here of the systems remains needlessly confusing, or perhaps I'm just getting too old for this shit.

Two different types of brake?

I like the two boosts, to be honest, it adds quite a lot of strategy to the game. I’m glad I’ve got a controller with rear paddles though as having to click the stick for Ramjet each time must be quite awkward.

There's brake on left trigger and "advanced manoeuvre" on X, which essentially, depending on vehicle is a sort of handbrake. You can't get Golds in the time trials without mastering continually boosting almost the entire lap (alternating between boost and…. er… boost) and then trying to hit corners perfectly with a handbrake slide so you don't lose momentum.

Clicking the stick in for the ramjet is a pain in the arse. It always makes the camera swing one way or another, as how can you go from not using the right stick to clicking it in smoothly? Well, I can't, anyway. The two different types of boost kind of mean you have to hold down two different buttons (A and RT) to go fast. It seems a bit needless.

This has been a mad couple of months for games, definitely need to add Galactic Racer to the list.

If you can separate the art from the arsehole, Order of the Sinking Star is great. I've hit a roadblock about a hundred puzzles in though, and my brain refuses to find a solution. Hopefully I'll figure it out tonight.

Annoyingly (and presumably by design) the levels don't have any numbers or names, so it's going to be difficult finding the solution online.

Felt like dabbling in lovecraftian horrors beyond human comprehension so I started Eternal Darkness a little earlier than I intended to (was going to take a break after FF2) and man, there's something so comfortingly Gamecube about that game that I can't really quite explain, the character models maybe, the fact that in the back of my head this is a cult classic GC game? Either way this is unlocking a memory from the core of my brain, I have played this before but I haven't beat it and it's been so long that it's like the time I finally finished Skies of Arcadia where I'll only really recall stuff as it enters my line of sight again in the moment and it's really cool to experience how your brain has basically hidden stuff away for decades in a void but it's never actually forgot any of it.

And only being less than an hour in I can see the vision, a horror story told over a few thousand years through several characters, isolated chapter style with protagonists that range from useful warrior to a mere civilian, meanwhile in between chapters you explore a mansion in present day solving puzzles in a Resident Evil like Mansion to slowly thread the narrative together. Oh and one of the defining mechanics is that you can can go crazy, and that mechanic might sometimes catch you unawares in real life. (Too bad emulating this probably spoils that aspect a bit)

This has been a mad couple of months for games, definitely need to add Galactic Racer to the list.

If you can separate the art from the arsehole, Order of the Sinking Star is great. I've hit a roadblock about a hundred puzzles in though, and my brain refuses to find a solution. Hopefully I'll figure it out tonight.

Annoyingly (and presumably by design) the levels don't have any numbers or names, so it's going to be difficult finding the solution online.

I hadn't really looked at what ol' J Blow was spouting, but holy shit, he's a wrongun on every axis.

The more I've played of Galactic Racer (and it still hasn't been very much, really) the more I think my initial suspicions about the scripting only really applied to the intro mission. I do still seem to be doing a lot of overtaking on the final lap, but the game in general does not guide you by the hand making sure you win all the time, like what Forza Horizon 6 does. It can be brutally hard, and the difficulty comes from what you are doing in the game, not the game arbitrarily deciding to make something harder.

Anyway, for the month in general -

Play
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle - This is great. It represents a fork that games could have gone down, towards rip-roaring curated triple-A adventures, instead of the path it took towards Games As Service slop. You're in a map, you have objectives related to the story and side stories, and you just romp around Indying it up for all your worth. Everyone mentions the Troy Baker voice performance, but it is genuinely like some kind of magic trick. My favorite thing about the game is Indy's propensity to eat handfuls of dry breadsticks when his stamina is waning. Imagine if you saw someone do that. They're exhausted and panting, but they grab eight breadsticks in a bundle and just chomp through them like Bugs Bunny eating a carrot. "That's better!" They say, before leaping onto a nearby box and scrambling onto a roof. I could talk more about the game, but I think the fact that it is the best dry breadstick eating simulator on the market should be enough for anyone.

Cyberpunk 2077 - This is a very, very, extraordinarily good game now, after all the fixes and updates. However, it's not the most welcoming one. The city is an amazing setting, incredibly dense and detailed. It is, frankly, way ahead of the GTA V setting. There is something strange about it though - in GTA V I got a feel of where I was, got to know my way around the map. That hasn't happened in Cyberpunk, despite 25 hours of play. Whenever I go down a street, in a vehicle or on foot, it might as well be the first time I've been there. There is one bridge I recognise when I go over it, but that's it. This might be because I'm usually following a yellow line to the next quest location. Perhaps I should be kicking back and wandering around more, taking V back to her apartment to sleep and stuff, but the game's story injects an element of desperate urgency, so that doesn't really feel natural.

It's not just the fact that I'm always lost that pushes me away a bit. Part of it is that the game is so good, to be honest. If I load it up I know I'm committing to what will probably be a few hours, because it's hard to tear yourself away. When you're playing it, it feels like a generational classic. When I'm not playing it though, I don't always want to go back. Part of it is the time factor, but also the desperation I mentioned. The story is tragic, and V's situation is so horrible it makes me feel anxious. The crowded hostility of the city really contributes to this too. The few nice characters you meet aren't people I, middle-aged boring Dad feltmonkey, would want to hang around with. I used to play football with a team of friendly good-hearted criminal reprobates, and that stressed me out. Give me a crew of jumper-wearing squares who've never seen the inside of a police car any day.

Despite my vague complaints (and if you look closely, notice that every complaint is completely a me problem, something wrong with my brain rather than the game) it is a stunning, brilliant game. The setting, the story, the writing, the performances (even Keanu), the combat, the immersive sim elements - it's all top notch. The driving isn't amazing, it's more GTA 4 than GTA 5, but it's definitely more interesting to walk about anyway. It's also so much better than it was at launch, so if you played it back in 2020 and drowned in the jank, it's worth going back. The jank is gone now, and a great game turned out to be in there after all.

Want
I'm still looking forward to GTA 6. Or I'm looking forward to a year or so's time when it drops to an affordable price.

Bin
I mean…
It's grim, isn't it? Robert Jenrick said yesterday that the Royal Navy should use lethal force against asylum seekers. And he only said that as a dead cat because Andy Burnham admitted that Russia had interfered with the brexit referendum. And Reform are only having to do their own dead cats because some of Russia's bot farms were blown up by Ukraine. Going onto the reddit UK news subreddits after that was surreal, as suddenly they were mysteriously empty of the normal chorus of insane pro-reform voices. While this should be good news, it really isn't, because the bots seem to be getting revived or there are real duped or stupid British people to pick up the slack, and you're just left with the anger that our country was sabotaged in 2016, and that even if you point all this out to the Farageites, the discourse has been so thoroughly wrecked that people either don't believe you or don't care. We can't get it back now - it can't be fixed.

Which brings me to another depressing candidate for the Bin - Manchester City. I could write pages about this, and I already have in various corners of the internet. Again, even if they are punished appropriately, the damage cannot be undone. They have stolen so many great memories from other clubs' fans. I know a few people on here don't follow football, so might not understand the magnitude of the cheating, but what they did was give themselves an unassailable advantage over everyone else. They pumped so much money into the club, when everyone else was playing by the rules, that they were able to create a period of dominance unmatched in English football. I mention this so that the non-football-followers can understand that they didn't just do some kind of technical financial jiggery-pokery, their cheating was sporting, not financial, and they ruined football for at least 10 years. "At least" because the investigation only went up to 2018, and they've had another 8 years of dominance since then. Even if they did suddenly stop cheating (they didn't - they were the only football club in the world to report a profit during Covid) they were still reaping the spoils of the advantage they had given themselves by signing all the best players in the world.

No punishment can undo what they have done. We're not going to go back and replay finals, rewrite league tables. Even if their trophies are stripped (they better be) that doesn't do any good for their opponents. Players who would have won league titles are not going to be whisked back in time and able to celebrate on the pitch. Watford reached only the second final in their history and were beaten 6-0 by a team assembled through fraudulent means. Retrospectively awarding them that FA Cup wouldn't be much consolation to their fans now. It wouldn't erase that horrible afternoon for them. The journalist Andy Mitten talked about taking his Dad to a cup final and seeing City beat their team, Man Utd. His Dad is dead now. So that's gone, a memory stolen, impossible to fix.

Even beyond this anger-inducing stuff, there's the factor of why this was done in the first place. Sportswashing. All this cheating, the destruction of our national sport, the beautiful game, in aid of making an oppressive regime look good. A regime that may have funded a genocide in Sudan.

Sorry this got so long, to anyone still reading. I only intended to talk about breadsticks, but got sidetracked and ended up on genocide. That's a possible autobiography title. From Breadsticks to Genocide - The Feltmonkey Story.

I'd read it.

I don't follow football so the Man City thing has passed me by, but aren't they all at it? I'd always assumed football had been just a money laundering exercise for at least thirty years now, for pretty much every major team, and Man City were just doing it a bit more or less subtly than all the others. In the same way I just assume Olympic athletes are all on drugs, just really good ones that haven't been detected yet.

I think it's the scale of the Man City thing - clearly all organisations funded by oil money are going to have a massive advantage. Sportswashing is a thing. In eSports, Falcons have bought out almost all the best players in all the leading eSports to create superteams, backed by huge salaries and a team of coaches and sports psychologists. It's hard to root for your favourite players when they're basically paying to win.

Man City though is a step above even that. Massive, systemic corruption, and resources that dwarf even the other teams with dirty money in the League. And in a physical sport with a human referee there's more room for that money to have a real impact, even in a league already sloshing with money. I disconnected from football a while back (used to love Football Ramble and followed Everton closely) but the sheer state of the Premier League drove me away. It's sad, but it's the latest in a long line of things money has ruined, or is about to ruin.

I don't follow football so the Man City thing has passed me by, but aren't they all at it? I'd always assumed football had been just a money laundering exercise for at least thirty years now, for pretty much every major team, and Man City were just doing it a bit more or less subtly than all the others. In the same way I just assume Olympic athletes are all on drugs, just really good ones that haven't been detected yet.

Weirdly, no they're not all up to what Man City have been up to. This isn't a bit of creative accounting, like what Chelsea regularly do. Chelsea should not have been let off the hook they way they were, by the way. Man City weren't just pushing the margins. What they were doing was obvious to absolutely everybody. They inflated sponsorship deals to an absurd degree. At a point when they were a mid-table team who hadn't won anything in decades, they "sold" their stadium naming rights for four times what Arsenal, one of the biggest clubs in the world, had sold their stadium naming rights for a few years previously. They pumped in a billion pounds at a time when football economics were no where near as insane as they are now. They actually share a lot of blame for transfer inflation over the last 15 years, as football's biggest spenders.

It's not just a case of one cheater beating a bunch of other cheaters. Most of the teams were following these rules, in part because the sanctions were pretty harsh. Everton got a points reduction for a small technical fault related to paying for their new stadium. Nottingham Forest got a points reduction because a player sale went through a few days late, meaning it fell in the wrong financial period. Man City became the biggest spenders in football history overnight while clubs were supposed to only be spending money that they had brought in through legitimate means. They spent so much nobody could compete with them on the pitch or in the transfer market. The Premier League was asleep at the wheel, and let them get away with it for far too long.

Dino Crisis 1 is a lot harder than the classic Resident Evil games so far and a LOT harder than Dino Crisis 2, which is extremely brainless action. (good game though)

It's doing things its own way which is fine but it feels a bit clunky in some areas, not being able to see my own health is crazy.